Imagine you are making an intense effort in training or racing. It’s hard, but simultaneously, you have the most incredible feeling in the world. You are full of energy, every muscle works in harmony, and even your breathing is organized. You are in what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi would describe as a flow state.[9] This state is reached when you realize a task that has just the right balance of challenge; it’s not too easy nor too difficult. This is what proper training should feel like. You are outside of your comfort zone, sending a signal to the body for adaption, but you are not digging a grave for yourself.

As mentioned earlier, technology should indeed have a plus; if it doesn’t help, it’s just noise. The question most people should ask themselves should be, what can I subtract rather than what can I add? We have a finite amount of cognitive load available to us every day, and if we use it to consume mindlessly, what is it for? This creative energy should be used to make meaningful changes to the world.

Once again, cycling presents a wonderful opportunity to spend mindful time in solitude, which in turn allows you to fine-tune your training.

Let’s delve into the process of organizing your training schedule. The first step is to define your project clearly. 'Define' might not be the most fitting term here; it's more about tuning into your inner voice than setting a goal. If you’re unsure of your destination, any path will do. To embark on the right journey towards self-realization, you need to orient yourself properly.

That direction gives the mind context to work with. If you have an event set in a few weeks now, you have the direction. What you need now are the steps, the single workouts day after day that will work as little steps on this staircase to heaven.

You have to answer this question: In the context of my whole life, what is the appropriate training schedule for this week so that it is the most healthy thing to do? How many hours? How many high-intensity sessions?

I have four kinds of weeks: a regular week, a high-volume week, a race week, and a recovery week. You again have to start with purpose. Now that cycling is no longer my main focus in life, I ride eight hours a week with one high-intensity session a week. When it was, twelve hours would have been optimal with two high-intensity sessions a week when I trained for the track (short event) and fifteen when I trained for gravel with one high-intensity session (long event).

I won’t change the volume based on my life focus for the high-volume, race, and recovery weeks, but I’d change the interval sessions depending on the event. For high-volume weeks, I would do twenty hours with two high-intensity sessions. For race weeks, eight hours before the race if it’s on Sunday, including two high-intensity sessions. For recovery weeks, I would do eight hours and keep it easy all week.

You should start here. You can use mine as a starting point, but you probably have enough internal data to adjust these four kinds of weeks based on your experience. Your body will communicate a hypothesis to you that you will test and then reflect on it, and then you will have a new hypothesis to test, and so forth. This is a combination of both empiricism and rationalism. You learn both from experience and reason.

As I mentioned, context always matters. The goal is not to be the greatest cyclist and have no family life or produce fulfilling work; the goal is to find the right balance so you walk on the path, saying, “That feels right deep inside of me.” We should never sacrifice long-term health for performance.

Now that I have introduced the four kinds of weeks, I’ll present you with four different types of workouts you can use as a template.

Endurance: For endurance, enjoy the country. Listen to the birds singing, the clicking of the gears, and the wind brushing against your skin. Just ride and enjoy. I recommend not looking at the computer at all; put it in your back pocket so you have zero distractions.

Initially, I had a tough time finding my natural pace; I always tried to chase a number for my rides; when I had the power meter, I always tried to reach a specific number. I couldn’t be completely satisfied with any number. Even on my gravel bike, which had no power meter, I would still try to calculate an approximation of my power output for a given ride. Only when I sold my road bike with a power meter did I let go of this. Now, I feel no urge to accelerate or slow down; it feels perfect. It’s my active meditation.

Easy riding should make up the vast majority of your training. Research by Stephen Seiler and Kjerland (2006) has shown that elite endurance athletes typically distribute their training in a way that prioritizes low-intensity work, with approximately 80 percent of their training volume performed below the first lactate threshold. This approach, known as polarized or pyramidal training, balances a large amount of easy training with a smaller percentage of high-intensity efforts. The polarized model is characterized by a clear split between low and high-intensity work. In contrast, the pyramidal model incorporates moderate intensity alongside high intensity but still emphasizes lower-intensity work overall. Their findings suggest that focusing most of the training at lower intensities, with a select amount of high-intensity sessions, can significantly improve performance by building a solid aerobic foundation and promoting recovery while also stimulating necessary adaptations through occasional intense efforts.[10]

You may ask if pushing a bit on the hills is allowed during these rides. My answer: Don’t think about it; ride. If you occasionally go above the first threshold or even the second threshold, it’s perfectly acceptable. Don’t stress over details; keep that precious cognitive load for meaningful tasks.

How long should your rides last? It will first depend on weekly volume, but it’s better to ride fewer and longer rides than to try every day. I typically go out three times a week for my eight hours, while on a high-volume week, I would ride six times. The duration of each ride then becomes more of a function of your weekly volume. Again, you want to find the answer inside. I reserve my very long rides, which typically last six and a half hours for my high-volume weeks, and I always place some intervals at the end. I am not a fan of short active recovery rides; I find it better to do something else on recovery days than cycle at a very low and unnatural pace. Recovery days are great for bringing the body back into balance both physically and mentally.

To further expand on the idea of riding without data, studies on cognitive load, such as “Mental Fatigue Impairs Physical Performance in Humans” by Marcora et al. (2009), indicate that constantly processing data like power output can increase mental fatigue. In endurance sports, where mental stamina is vital, monitoring performance metrics can add unnecessary cognitive strain, potentially lowering performance over time.[11] This reinforces the value of tuning into one’s body rather than being data-driven. To expand on this, I even noticed that my rate of perceived exertion tends to increase when I look at data, especially when staring at an output like power or speed.

Endurance rides are also the perfect time to learn to listen to your nutritional and hydration needs. You want to learn to feel when your body asks for carbohydrates and liquids. I remember that for so many years, I would not fuel or very little during races, but now I almost reached the point where I don’t need to think about it. I start the race with the right drinks in my bottles and food items in my pocket, and my hand will go there when I need it. This highlights the importance of a strong interoception.

As people grow, they start learning to ignore these signals so they can push harder; however, reconnecting to these signals is the key to adjusting one’s path. Work smarter, not harder.

To expand on on-bike nutrition, a study by Fuchs, Gonzalez, and van Loon (2019) demonstrated that fructose co-ingestion with glucose significantly increases carbohydrate availability during prolonged exercise. The researchers found that the combination of glucose and fructose enhanced exogenous carbohydrate oxidation rates compared to glucose alone, ultimately improving overall energy availability. This suggests that co-ingesting fructose could be an effective strategy for athletes seeking to optimize performance in endurance-based activities by maximizing their carbohydrate absorption and utilization during exercise.[12]

This is now much validated, as mixing these two kinds of carbohydrates allows further absorption as they use different pathways. This is especially important for racing when you need to maximize carbohydrate intake—anything over sixty grams an hour. For reference, I typically consume around twenty to forty grams of carbs per hour for endurance rides. I also almost always rinse my mouth with clean water every time I drink some carbohydrate mix. I do this to prevent dental damage. Examining the quantity of carbs to consume on the bike in different scenarios is essential.

Sustained work: The second kind of workout is the sustained interval work. The goal of this work is to reach exhaustion after a long period at a given intensity. When doing this, you want to feel that you are in control. For these, I use the map page on my computer without any other data showing, and I turn the page to check the time only when I know I am close to the end.

A workout I often pick for this kind of work is four minutes below the second threshold, coupled with a minute above it. I repeat this sequence four times in a row, making it a twenty-minute block. Then, I repeat this block thrice. When riding below the threshold, you feel that the effort is challenging but sustainable, meaning that the effort doesn’t become significantly more challenging minute after minute. On the other hand, riding above the threshold means that your perceived exertion increases noticeably over time. Every minute is more demanding than the previous one. I like this kind of workout as it stimulates the demand of racing, which is rarely steady state, improving my capacity to produce high lactate and then recycle it at a relatively high intensity.

As you can see, I use a custom basic three-zone system. As you start to know my philosophy by now, I obviously encourage you to get to the fundamentals. Less is indeed more. In that three-zone system, you have two anchor points known as the first, aerobic, and the second, anaerobic threshold. While there are many scientific methods to estimate these, which you could not apply on rides, even a power test doesn’t work flawlessly as it gives you a number when you are fresh, not considering the impact of the accumulated fatigue in that workout or before. Training with your internal sensations (RPE) solves this problem.

You should perform these intervals on a hill or a place where you can start from the same point every time; that way, you can assess where you finish every time. If you have good pacing, you will end up almost at the same place across intervals. When I do these, I am very often within tens of meters between each repetition, which is excellent on a twenty-minute bout. At the end of the last interval, you want to feel that you finish with some power, but when you are done, you are done. It feels right until the end; you are still in a flow state but delighted to finish.

You may wonder how you can assess progress using this framework. A great way to do so is to use the same hill during intervals across different sessions with matched perceived exertion. Beware to account for weather changes, and never chase a faster time or higher power number. Let your body solve this equation, and if you want to track power data, look after the session.

You can explore changing the duration of each component of this workout or even make it a sustained effort at a single pace, but I suggest you always make it so that you reach exhaustion. You may not need as much as sixty minutes of work, especially if you are newer in the sport. Thirty minutes of total work can be perfect for some people, while others might need more than sixty minutes. Again, try what feels right, listen to your body during the workout, reflect on it later, and repeat the process.

For this kind of workout long workout, you can also try sustained efforts. When I performed sustained efforts, I did only thirty minutes of total work, as I used it more as a maintenance session than to drive progress.

Short-interval work: The third type of work is short-interval work. Here, the objective is to strain the body over a short period of time rather than sustaining an effort for an extended period. You want to open the valve and let it out. You may use your computer for this kind of interval work, but make sure you only have the time showing; it is enough data. Focus on the effort.

For this kind of work, I do repetitions of thirty seconds on and thirty seconds off. I do five repetitions. You would, of course, adjust the number of repetitions based on your unique physiology. When done correctly, you finish each set with nothing left in the tank, but it still felt right; you weren’t exploding.

Imagine your anaerobic capacity as a battery. Some people have different sizes of batteries, but most importantly, people have different abilities regarding the speed at which they can empty them. A very fast-twitch rider would typically need fewer sets and repetitions in this kind of workout than a more slow-twitch rider to empty their battery. You can start with a hypothesis and adjust the workload based on your inner data collected during a session. During these sessions, start hard and deplete your battery. Again, always have a feeling of rightness inside of you.

I also have a second workout, forty seconds on and twenty seconds off. It makes sense that there will be less intensity difference between the work and recovery than for the previous workout. While the first workout is preferred to work on anaerobic capacity, this one is great to emphasize time spent at or close to VO2 max as your oxygen consumption doesn’t have time to drop much with the shortened recoveries. Ensure you are in flow during and when you finish the set. I target two sets of six repetitions for this workout. Again, you may need to adjust this recommendation.

Fatigue resistance: The final workout type consists of doing your intervals toward the end of a ride.

Indeed, most cycling events are endurance-based. Except for sprints on the track, which we can argue still has an endurance component as sprints are sustained contrary to a contest of who has the highest peak power, all cycling events require some fatigue resistance.

For this reason, integrating intervals late in a ride is a nifty strategy. I pick the same sequence of four minutes and a minute as the sustained work but place it at the end of a long endurance ride. Depending on the duration of your race and your level, you will want to adjust the duration before starting the intensity block and the duration of the block itself. For the accumulated time before the intervals, I suggest that you do slightly longer than the duration of your race, measured from the moment you start the ride until you finish the intensity block; you don’t count the cool-down time. For the intensity block, I do twenty minutes. Again, you might need to adjust that to a slightly lower or higher dose.

As you can see, I reduced the work to a single set of long work for this workout, as a significant amount of work had already been done. Again, it’s all about paying attention to your body and adjusting so that you feel an inner strength during the workout, and when the finish comes, you have that sense of accomplishment you could not have done more in flow.

There is one exception to this rule, and that is during a race week. A proper taper typically includes a maintenance of intensity while reducing volume. So, during a taper week, you might want to do about half of the workload during an interval session. If I race gravel on Sunday, I do two sets of fifteen minutes of four minutes and a minute on Tuesday and Saturday. For the track, I would do the classic 40/20s on Tuesday and two sets of three minutes of 30/30s on Saturday. You can see how I adjust for race specificity here by focusing on more prolonged efforts for long-distance events and, inversely, focusing on short intervals for short-distance events.

You might wonder if you could use music during intervals. Music tends to make me start the first interval harder than I would with silence. So, try without and enjoy the intervals for themselves. It makes it much easier to find the right pace.

Performing these different sessions in silence and with only the necessary data will allow you to refine your inner connection. You may find it rather difficult initially, but as you integrate silence and journaling into your daily practice, you will realize that it becomes much more accessible and that you reach a new sense of enjoyment in your practice of that beautiful sport. To summarize it all again: Ride in silence, reflect in writing, test a new hypothesis, and repeat. That’s how you combine empiricism and rationalism in training and life.

Summary:

• There are four kinds of weeks and sessions.
• Learn to feel the flow state; it should feel right.
• Analyze and refine your findings.
  
  

[9] Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1st Harper Perennial Modern Classics ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2008).

[10] Stephen Seiler and Espen Tønnessen Kjerland, “Quantifying Training Intensity Distribution in Elite Endurance Athletes: Is There Evidence for an ‘Optimal’ Distribution?” Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports 16, no. 1 (2006): 49-56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2004.00418.x.

[11] Marcora, Samuele M., William Staiano, and Victoria Manning. “Mental Fatigue Impairs Physical Performance in Humans.” Journal of Applied Physiology 106, no. 3 (2009): 857-864. https://doi.org/10.1152/japplphysiol.91324.2008.

[12] Cas J. Fuchs, Javier T. Gonzalez, and Luc J. C. van Loon. "Fructose Co-Ingestion to Increase Carbohydrate Availability in Athletes." The Journal of Physiology 597, no. 14 (2019): 3549-3560. https://doi.org/10.1113/JP277116.